7 Steps to Stay on Track When Your Plans Crumble
We’ve all been there, carefully laid plans crumbling before our eyes, leaving us scrambling to pick up the pieces. Whether it’s a missed deadline, an unexpected obstacle, or just plain bad luck, dealing with a disrupted plan can be challenging. But fear not! Here are seven action-oriented ideas to help you get back on track when your plans fall apart.
1. Stay Calm
Any situation can be made worse by losing control of yourself. If the situation is already falling apart, don’t let yourself unravel with it. This is the time to exercise self-control, stay calm and try to salvage what’s left. Occasionally by just providing a counter to the chaos, it is enough to give perspective and help autocorrect the situation. Simply put, sometimes all that is needed is to have someone in charge who isn’t out of control.
2. Assess the Situation
If you’ve managed to stay in control, now is the time to rationally assess the situation. Is it actually as bad as you think? Is the plan salvageable? Understanding the root cause is crucial for finding an effective solution. Start by asking questions:
· What is actually happening?
· What went wrong?
· What was the first step in the wrong direction?
· Did a lack of resources cause it?
· Were there unforeseen circumstances?
· Was there a flaw in the original plan?
If you’re acting with partially incorrect information, you might cause more damage to the situation rather than helping resolve it. Seeking to understand, then acting, results in better decision-making.
3. Focus on What You Can Control
After you understand the problem and what caused it, concentrate on the parts of the situation you can influence. Was it a member of your team that caused the issue, or was it an external factor like a swing in the market? You can’t solve regulatory problems, but you can help a teammate improve if they drop the ball. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the chaos of a failed plan, but exclusively focusing on that will only make you frustrated. If it really has hit the fan, focus on what is still within your control and don’t waste time on things you can’t change anyway.
4. Be Flexible
Stay flexible and be open to changing your approach. Some of the answers you receive, and items still within your control might shock you. It could be really bad news or very encouraging news. Whatever the situation is, be willing to adapt to that new information and adjust your plan as needed. Sometimes, the best solutions come from thinking from a different point of view. If you are too rigid, that can cause the best solution to not appear viable because you are so unwilling to change. Allow yourself to consider other options that might appear suboptimal. They might actually be the key to stopping the downward spiral. And if the situation demands it, any positive outcome is better than failing outright.
5. Reprioritize
Now that you have a correct understanding of the problem(s) and have been flexible enough to identify approaches other than the original one, write out the ideas and tasks. There might be an idea that flies off the page as “this is the silver bullet.” However, if you aren’t that lucky, you will need to identify and sequence them according to their value. If it doesn’t add value to the plan, move it to the bottom, or off the list.
Find the biggest impact items and prioritize them. The top of your list should be items that add a tremendous amount of value when completed. By focusing on value first, you will achieve meaningful results faster. Additionally, the act of comparing them will help you reassess and reprioritize. Then, identify the most critical tasks that need immediate attention and move them up the list. When something is on fire, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to start there. If solving a problem doesn’t advance your plan, it doesn’t matter how urgent it is, it’s not relevant. It’s essential to know the difference.
6. Be Decisive
Some of you might be wondering why this is the second to last item instead of towards the start. Hopefully I’ve outlined how acting is reserved for after you know what to do. I’ve seen that no amount of blindly telling others what to do or making quick uninformed decisions leads to better outcomes. If you haven’t gathered enough information about how to fix the problem, no amount of “acting quickly” will solve it. Especially if you come in hot.
When you have calmly assessed the situation by determining what you can change and prioritized the actions with the most value, then you can be decisive. After you feel you have enough information to confidently make the right move, don’t wait anymore, act. There is a balance to this. Waiting too long to gather information or acting without enough, are both recipes for disaster. Good judgement is learned by experience, and not always the preferred kind. However, the more frequently you do this, the better your outcomes are going to be. Especially when paired with the next step.
7. Learn and Move Forward
Once the crisis passes and you have time to reflect on everything that happened, document it and review any notes you took. If there were more people than just yourself, talk with them. Gather the key team players and have a true lessons-learned experience. Talk about it all and don’t make it personal. Remember, people make mistakes and blame fixes nothing. Learning from it is the vital part. How you respond to the failure really matters. If you never fail, it means you aren’t trying difficult things. No one is perfect, so when mistakes happen, it generally means people are trying. Your goal should be to learn what went wrong and document how you can avoid it next time.
Conclusion
Plans falling apart is a part of life, but how you respond makes all the difference. Sometimes a plan isn’t salvageable. Don’t think that because you have spent significant time and money on something means that you need to keep going with it. When you end a lost cause, it doesn’t mean you are a quitter, it means you’re smart. I’ve helped pull the plug on a company’s 10-year project that wasn’t working anymore. It ruffled a lot of feathers, but what replaced that product gave better insight into the profitability of the company. Of course that’s a win.
On the flip side, don’t be so hasty that you end something that you should see through. Experience is the best teacher, and having a learning mindset when you fail will help you avoid the many pitfalls that are in your future. They will help you know when to see it through or pull the plug. Remember, how you respond to failure really matters, those around you will either look to you as a calm confident problem-solving leader or a hot-headed mess that makes things worse. Which are you striving to be?
